When the Milwaukee Brewers acquired Nyjer Morgan from the Washington Nationals for single-A outfielder, Cutter Dykstra, Morgan was coming off of a down year in which he was branded as a legitimate head case.  He steamrolled a few catchers in blowout games, he missed a catch and threw his glove into the stands, he charged the mound and threw some punches at Chris Volstad, and he was even accused of throwing a ball at a fan.

Needless to say, Morgan was becoming a problem, and Washington was ready to run him out of town. 

Even if we push his personality issues aside, Morgan still had a less than stellar 2010 campaign.  Entering the season, he was a career .302 hitter.  In 2010, he hit just .253.  He was clearly a player who lost his way, and it was easy to see why Doug Melvin might want to take him on as a reclamation project.  Especially since the Brewers were ready to run Carlos Gomez, he of the wiffle bat, onto the field every day.  So I set out to see what Nyjer’s problem was at the plate, and what he could do to correct it. 

In April I wrote this piece and basically surmised that Morgan’s BABIP dropped 50 points because, at least partially because, he was swinging at far more pitches outside of the zone than he had in years’ past. 

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OK, so this has been done before, specifically over at Lookout Landing with a current Milwaukee Brewer.  But, let's try it for ourselves with Pirates' center fielder, Andrew McCutchen...

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From 2007-2009, Nyjer Morgan was a pretty valuable player.  OK, he wasn’t valuable in the Ryan Braun or Zack Greinke sense of the word, but he got the job done.  He played good defense, he hit .290-.300, and he had lightning quick speed on the base paths.

Over those years, he had been able to parlay that speed into a BABIP around .350.  Sure, .350 is high, but for a player as fast as Morgan, it’s sustainable.  But in 2010, his BABIP dipped 50 points, causing his average to dip roughly the same amount.

So what was the cause?  It’s easy to write a sudden drop in BABIP off as bad luck, but you need to see if something else was going on.

His GB%, LD% and FB% were all in line with his career numbers.  His IFFB% doubled, which could mean that he wasn’t hitting the ball on the nose due to a mechanical flaw in his swing.  However, his Infield flies went from 2 to 4.  That’s not exactly earth shattering.

So let’s look at his plate discipline.  Below is a graph of his O-swing % and his O-Contact%.  These are the rates at which he swings at pitches outside the strike zone, and at which he makes contact with pitches outside the strike zone.

First, notice his 2010 O-Swing% spiked by almost 5%.  That’s a pretty significant change.  Along with that, he made more contact with bad pitches.  By swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, he’s not going to make as solid of contact.  So, even if his contact rate was static, his BABIP would probably be negatively affected by a 5% increase in his O-Swing%.  But he was not only swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone, but he was making contact with a higher percentage of those swings.

Now, I don’t know if these increases would be enough to account for a 50 point decrease in BABIP, but they’re certainly a factor. So, if he wants to return his batting average to .300 as a Brewer, he’s going to need to lay off of pitches outside the zone.

  Now that the 2010 beginning-of-season-payroll is essentially set at $85 million, I asked myself a question.

Is it too early to start looking at the 2011 roster?

I mean, the 2010 roster isn't even set yet.  Pitchers and Catchers have yet to report to Maryvale, AZ.  There's so much that can change with this team in the next 6 months, let alone the next year.  However, I started to think about all the chatter that's been going on here, and elsewhere, about whether or not Prince Fielder should be traded or signed to an extension.  People have questioned whether or not the club will have money to offer to him.  Really, both sides have made some pretty compelling cases.  So I decided that, if we are going to begin to analyze next year's roster, we need to take a look at the financial situation before we go any further.  In other words, the answer to the above question is, "Yes, I decided to write this piece."  And since you're reading it, you already figured that out.

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 EDIT:  I added the spreadsheet to googledocs.  If you want, you can now access it here, edit it how you would like to see each position filled, and then paste it in the comments below.  (Be sure to preview your post, the comments don't like excel formatting so much)

With the demotion of JJ Hardy, and the DFA of Bill Hall, the Brewers fan base has begun to discuss plans for 2010.  This 20-minute interview with Doug Melvin focuses, in large part, on the upcoming offseason, while this fanpost by sowingwildoats focuses on 2010 lineup construction.  When it comes to transactions and roster-building, money is half of the equation.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to think of the big fiscal picture when there are 25-40 different contracts compiled into the payroll.  Cot’s has a nice spreadsheet showing payroll obligations through 2013.  However, it doesn’t count players in arbitration years towards the payroll, leaving it difficult to project how much money will be available in any given offseason.

So I made my own spreadsheet, using information from Cot’s and filling in the gaps with arbitration estimates.  I tried to be conservatively accurate, as I don’t want to overestimate how much money will be available in the offseason.

So here it is:

The last two years, the Brewers have started the season with an $80MM pay roll.  I’m going to assume that this number will rise.  At the beginning of the season, it seemed like management was throwing this team out there, and banking off the idea of adding a player at the deadline if they’re still in it.  I think Mark A. learned his lesson, and will be willing to add some payroll.  Even though I’d like to see a $90MM figure, in my attempt to be conservatively accurate, I’m going to interpolate and assume an $85MM payroll for 2010. 

That gives us roughly $20MM to work with as we enter free agency, with holes at C, CF, 2 SP, and CL.  I think it’s safe to say that either Hardy or Escobar will be moved.  If you’re curious, dealing Hardy would leave us with roughly $25MM (minus whatever contracts we take on) to spend.

So how would you allocate that money?  Who would you like to see us trade for?  Who would you like to see us sign?  What does your 2010 roster look like?

For a comprehensive list of this offseason's free agents, see Cot's